Business Insider was at Bloomberg Link's Portfolio Manager Mash-Up Conference today and our ears perked up when panelists mentioned something that they would probably need analysts to be able to to do in the future.

The panel was called Volatility and Alternative Asset Classes and the panelists weer Jack Foster, head of real estate assets at Franklin Templeton Real Asset Advisors, Frank Holmes CEO of U.S. Global Investors, Art Steinmetz, CIO of OppenheimerFunds, and Joshua Tarnow managing director and portfolio manager on BlackRock's leveraged finance team.

Holmes brought up that ETFs were a tricky financial vehicle. Value can be elusive and they're getting more and more complex. The panelists agreed that in the near future, portfolio managers are going to need analysts that can dissect ETFs to figure out what's really inside.

Those analysts will especially have to look at small cap companies within the vehicles to figure out if they are where they should be.

Sounds like a painstaking job.